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Wednesday, January 8, 2014

The Secret Life of the Sewing Machine


More from Tim Hunkin. This video is much longer than my usual YouTube fair, but I found it compelling. Sewing machines are one of the miracles of the modern age. Even for a gear head like me they are almost magical. They perform darn near invisible operations endlessly. They run virtually forever, require no maintenance, and it wasn't until I saw this video that I understood how they work. Oh, I sort of had an inkling, but I had never taken the trouble to sort it out because who needs to? They never break. The bit about Singer's personal life are entertaining. And that business about destroying old machines in order to boost sales of new machines tells me that the sewing machine may have been the invention that started our labor surplus. Wikipedia article about Isaac Singer.

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